BACKGROUND: . Previous findings suggest that language disorders may occur in severely brain-injured patients and could interfere with behavioral assessments of consciousness. However, no study ... [more ▼]

BACKGROUND: . Previous findings suggest that language disorders may occur in severely brain-injured patients and could interfere with behavioral assessments of consciousness. However, no study investigated to what extent language impairment could affect patients' behavioral responses. OBJECTIVE: . To estimate the impact of receptive and/or productive language impairments on consciousness assessment. METHODS: . Twenty-four acute and subacute stroke patients with different types of aphasia (global, n = 11; Broca, n = 4; Wernicke, n = 3; anomic, n = 4; mixed, n = 2) were recruited in neurology and neurosurgery units as well as in rehabilitation centers. The Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) was administered. RESULTS: . We observed that 25% (6 out of 24) of stroke patients with a diagnosis of aphasia and 54% (6 out of 11) of patients with a diagnosis of global aphasia did not reach the maximal CRS-R total score of 23. An underestimation of the consciousness level was observed in 3 patients with global aphasia who could have been misdiagnosed as being in a minimally conscious state, even in the absence of any documented period of coma. More precisely, lower subscores were observed on the communication, motor, oromotor, and arousal subscales. CONCLUSION: . Consciousness assessment may be complicated by the co-occurrence of severe language deficits. This stresses the importance of developing new tools or identifying items in existing scales, which may allow the detection of language impairment in severely brain-injured patients. [less ▲]

This study aimed at directly assessing the hypothesis that attentional allocation capacity influences poor NWR performances in children with SLI, using an attention demanding visual search task given ... [more ▼]

This study aimed at directly assessing the hypothesis that attentional allocation capacity influences poor NWR performances in children with SLI, using an attention demanding visual search task given concurrently with the NWR task. Twenty-one children with SLI, 21 typically-developing children matched on age, and 21 typically-developing children matched on nonword span performed an immediate serial recall task of nonwords. The nonword lists were presented either alone or concurrently with the visual search task. Overall, results revealed a resource-sharing trade-off between the two tasks. Children with SLI were affected to the same extent as their span-matched controls by the necessity to allocate their attentional resources between the two tasks. Interestingly, nonword processing strategies seemed to differ among groups: age-matched controls allocated a larger part of their attentional resources to the encoding stage, while nonword recall was more attention demanding in children with SLI and younger controls. [less ▲]

The aim of the study was to validate the use of electromyography (EMG) for detecting responses to command in patients in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) or in minimally ... [more ▼]

The aim of the study was to validate the use of electromyography (EMG) for detecting responses to command in patients in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) or in minimally conscious state (MCS). Methods: Thirty-eight patients were included in the study (23 traumatic, 25 patients >1 year post-onset), 10 diagnosed as being in VS/UWS, eight in MCS- (no response to command) and 20 in MCS+ (response to command). Eighteen age-matched controls participated in the experiment. The paradigm consisted of three commands (i.e. 'Move your hands', 'Move your legs' and 'Clench your teeth') and one control sentence (i.e. 'It is a sunny day') presented in random order. Each auditory stimulus was repeated 4-times within one block with a stimulus-onset asynchrony of 30 seconds. Results: Post-hoc analyses with Bonferroni correction revealed that EMG activity was higher solely for the target command in one patient in permanent VS/UWS and in three patients in MCS+. Conclusion: The use of EMG could help clinicians to detect conscious patients who do not show any volitional response during standard behavioural assessments. However, further investigations should determine the sensitivity of EMG as compared to neuroimaging and electrophysiological assessments. [less ▲]

Limitations in general processing capacities have been proposed to account for poor verbal short-term memory (STM) performances in children with SLI. Previous studies observed that STM performances ... [more ▼]

Limitations in general processing capacities have been proposed to account for poor verbal short-term memory (STM) performances in children with SLI. Previous studies observed that STM performances decreased to a larger extent in children with SLI as compared to their unaffected peers when the processing demands of the task increased (e.g., Ellis Weismer, et al., 2005; Montgomery, 2000a,b). However, in these studies, the increase in attention processing demands went with an increase in linguistic processing demands. Since children with SLI experience language processing problems, it is not clear whether general attention problems or language processing problems are at the root of their larger performance decrease as compared to their unaffected peers. This study aims at directly assessing the hypothesis that limitations in general attentional capacity are at the root of poor STM performances in children with SLI, using an attention demanding visual search task administered concurrently with nonword repetition task. Twenty-three children with SLI, 23 age-matched children, and 23 nonword span-matched children performed immediate serial recall tasks of nonwords. The STM lists were presented either alone or concurrently with the target detection task. Moreover, the target detection task either stopped or continued when children had to recall the nonwords. Results show a main effect of dual task condition on both nonword repetition accuracy and target detection accuracy. Performances in children with SLI were not more affected than in controls by the necessity to perform a concurrent visual attention task during nonword lists presentation. However, nonword recall seemed to be more challenging for children with SLI than for age-matched controls. Indeed, performances in the visual task were lower in children with SLI than in their age-matched controls, but not as compared to nonword span-matched controls. [less ▲]

Recent models of verbal short-term memory (STM) propose a distinction between item storage processes, which are viewed as domain-specific, and order storage processes, which are considered by some authors ... [more ▼]

Recent models of verbal short-term memory (STM) propose a distinction between item storage processes, which are viewed as domain-specific, and order storage processes, which are considered by some authors to be domain-general, at least as regards verbal and visual STM domains. Here we provide further evidence for domain-specific item STM processes and domain-general order STM processes by comparing item and order processing in verbal and musical STM domains. The musical domain is particularly relevant here given its reliance on different kinds of sequential processes (e.g., tones successions, rhythm). Using an interindividual differences approach, we administered to a group of young healthy adults different tasks requiring retention of item identity for words or tones, and tasks requiring retention of serial order information for word sequences or note sequences, as well as a task measuring retention abilities for rhythmic information. For the item STM tasks, we observed strong intercorrelations for within-domain WM measures, but not between-domain WM measures, after controlling for general WM abilities. For the serial order STM tasks, we observed a specific association with the rhythm STM task. These results highlight the importance of temporal sequential processes, as measured by the rhythm STM task, as a driving factor of domain-general STM processes in verbal and musical domains. They furthermore confirm the domain-specificity of item STM processes. [less ▲]

Recent findings suggest that mind-wandering—the occurrence of thoughts that are both stimulus-independent and task-unrelated—corresponds to temporary failures in attentional control processes involved in ... [more ▼]

Recent findings suggest that mind-wandering—the occurrence of thoughts that are both stimulus-independent and task-unrelated—corresponds to temporary failures in attentional control processes involved in maintaining constant task-focused attention. Studies supporting this proposal are, however, limited by a possible confound between mind-wandering episodes and other kinds of conscious experiences, such as external distractions (i.e., interoceptive sensations and exteroceptive perceptions). In the present study, we addressed this issue by examining, in adolescents and young adults, the relations between tasks measuring attentional control abilities and a measure of mind-wandering that is distinct from external distractions. We observed (1) that adolescents experienced more frequent external distractions, but not more mind-wandering, than young adults during the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and (2) that, in young adults, the influence of external distractions on SART performance was fully accounted for by attentional control abilities, whereas mind-wandering was associated with decreases in SART performance above and beyond what was explained by attentional control abilities. These results show that mind-wandering cannot be entirely reduced to failures in the ability to maintain one’s attention focused on task, and suggest that external distractions rather than mind-wandering are due to attentional control failures. [less ▲]